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Morupule Colliery
The Morupule Colliery is a coal mine located in Palapye, Botswana, owned and operated by Debswana, a partnership between the government of Botswana and De Beers. The coalfield is composed of four main seams, only one of which, the No. 1 Seam, is currently being mined, using bord and pillar mining methods methods. Founded in 1971 to supply the Bamangwato Concessions Ltd copper and nickel mine, operations have expanded considerably since then to supply regional power plants and industries, especially the nearby Morupule Power Station. Morupule was granted an extension to its mining lease in 1980. Expansion A small wash plant, with a production capability of 120 tonnes per hour, was commissioned in January 2008 to supply a higher quality coal to local and regional consumers. This project was supported by the Botswana government as a means of stimulating the local economy, producing a less polluting form of coal than the run-of-mine coal, and to provide an alternative to the unsust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palapye
Palapye is a growing town in Botswana, situated about halfway between Francistown and Gaborone ( from Francistown and from Gaborone). Over the years its position has made it a convenient stopover on one of Southern Africa's principal north–south rail and road routes. Located here is the Morupule Colliery coal mine, which supplies Morupule Power Station, Botswana's principal domestic source of electricity. The power station has undertaken an expansion project to increase its generation capacity in an effort to meet the country's increasing demand for electricity. Construction began in 2010. , Morupule A plant produces 132 MW of electricity, while Morupule B produces 600 MW. In 1997 Palapye was said to be the fastest-growing village in Africa, and was expected to expand its population from 30,000 to 180,000. History The Bamangwato people, under Kgosi Khama III, are widely believed to be the first people to have settled near present-day Palapye. Their capital was the settlement o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement. Copper is one of the few metals that can occur in nature in a directly usable metallic form ( native metals). This led to very early human use in several regions, from circa 8000 BC. Thousands of years later, it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, circa 5000 BC; the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, c. 4000 BC; and the first metal to be purposely alloyed with another metal, tin, to create ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North-South Carrier
The North-South Carrier (NSC) is a pipeline in Botswana that carries raw water south for a distance of to the capital city of Gaborone. Phase 1 was completed in 2000. Phase 2 of the NSC, under construction, will duplicate the pipeline to carry water from the Dikgatlhong Dam, which was completed in 2012. A proposed extension to deliver water from the Zambezi would add another to the total pipeline length. The NSC is the largest engineering project ever undertaken in Botswana. Climate Botswana has an arid climate, with little in the way of surface water supplies. Until recently, groundwater wells were used to meet about 80% of demand for water. Some of the groundwater accumulated long ago when the climate was wetter. "Groundwater mining" is not sustainable in areas where the water is not being renewed from the surface. The more populous eastern portion of Botswana lies in the Limpopo River basin, which is considered "closed". In the South African portion of the basin, water usa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permanent Employment
Permanent employees work for an employer and are paid directly by that employer. Permanent employees do not have a predetermined end date to employment. In addition to their wages, they often receive benefits like subsidized health care, paid vacations, holidays, sick time, or contributions. Permanent employees are often eligible to switch job positions within their companies. Even when employment is "at will", permanent employees of large companies are generally protected from abrupt job termination by severance policies, like advance notice in case of layoffs, or formal discipline procedures. They may be eligible to join a union, and may enjoy both social and financial benefits of their employment. With exception of South Korea, France, Germany, India and Japan where extensive laws and regulations make firing of permanent employees nearly impossible, rarely does "permanent employment" mean employment of an individual that is guaranteed throughout the employee's working life. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morupule Power Station
Morupule Thermal Power Station is a coal-fired power station in Botswana. It is responsible for an estimated 80 percent of the country's domestic power generation. Location The power station is located near the town of Palapye, in the Central District, approximately , by road, north-east of Gaborone, Botswana's capital city. The geographical coordinates of Morupule Thermal Power Station are 22°31'12.0"S, 27°02'12.0"E (Latitude:-22.520000; Latitude:27.036667). Overview Morupule A Morupule A Power Station comprises four air-cooled 33 megawatts coal-fired units, with coal supplied from the adjacent Morupule Colliery, owned by Debswana. Total generation capacity is 132 megawatts. Construction on the existing station started in 1982 and was completed in 1989. In 2016, the government of Botswana sourced funds to renovate and restore Morupule A. The contract was won by Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction at a contract price of BWP:2.5 billion (US$204 million in 2016 money). T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Plant
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many power stations contain one or more generators, a rotating machine that converts mechanical power into three-phase electric power. The relative motion between a magnetic field and a conductor creates an electric current. The energy source harnessed to turn the generator varies widely. Most power stations in the world burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas to generate electricity. Low-carbon power sources include nuclear power, and an increasing use of renewables such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric. History In early 1871 Belgian inventor Zénobe Gramme invented a generator powerful enough to produce power on a commercial scale for industry. In 1878, a hydroelectric power station was designed and built by Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic viability of investing in the equipment, labor, and energy required to extract, refine and transport the materials found at the mine to manufacturers who can use the material. Ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water. Modern mining processes involve prospecting for ore bodies, analysis of the profit potential of a proposed mine, extraction of the desired materials, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to react with air under standard conditions because a passivation layer of nickel oxide forms on the surface that prevents further corrosion. Even so, pure native nickel is found in Earth's crust only in tiny amounts, usually in ultramafic rocks, and in the interiors of larger nickel–iron meteorites that were not exposed to oxygen when outside Earth's atmosphere. Meteoric nickel is found in combination with iron, a reflection of the origin of those elements as major end products of supernova nucleosynthesis. An iron–nickel mixture is thought to compose Earth's outer and inner cores. Use of nickel (as natural meteoric nickel–iron alloy) has been traced as far back as 3500 BCE. Nickel was first isolated and classified as an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BCL Limited
BCL Limited, originally founded as ''Bamangwato Concessions Limited'', was a mining company in Selebi-Phikwe in Botswana. It was formed in 1956 to mine copper. In 1959, an agreement, signed by African Authority Rasebolai Kgamane, along with Seretse Khama and Oteng Mphoeng, allowed BCL to prospect. In 2004 the company changed its name to ''BCL Limited'' as parastatals in Botswana were separated from connections to tribes, Bamangwato The Bamangwato (more correctly BagammaNgwato, and also referred to as the BaNgwato or Ngwato) is one of the eight "principal" Tswana chieftaincies of Botswana. They ruled over a majority Bakalanga population (the largest ethnic group in Central Dis ... being one of them. Following lower market prices the mine was shut down in 2016, making over 5.000 people unemployed.{{Cite web , date=2016-10-19 , title=6,000 jobs to go at state-owned mines in Botswana , url=https://www.industriall-union.org/over-6000-jobs-to-go-at-state-owned-mines-in-botswana , access ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debswana
Debswana Diamond Company Limited, or simply Debswana, is a mining company located in Botswana, and is the world's leading producer of diamonds by value. Debswana operates four diamond mines in the eastern and central parts of Botswana, as well as a coal mine. Debswana is a joint venture between the government of Botswana and the South African diamond company De Beers; each party owns 50 percent of the company. Mines The mines owned and operated by Debswana are: *Diamond mines: **Orapa diamond mine, opened in 1971 **Letlhakane diamond mine, opened in 1975 **Jwaneng diamond mine, opened in 1982 **Damtshaa diamond mine, opened in 2003 *Coal mine: **Morupule Colliery, opened in 1973 History Debswana was formed as the De Beers Botswana Mining Company on the 23rd of June 1968, after De Beers geologists identified diamond-bearing deposits at Orapa in the 1960s. Over the next five years, the government of Botswana increased its ownership stake from an original 15 percent to 50 percent. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Room And Pillar Mining
Room and pillar or pillar and stall is a variant of breast stoping. It is a mining system in which the mined material is extracted across a horizontal plane, creating horizontal arrays of rooms and pillars. To do this, "rooms" of ore are dug out while "pillars" of untouched material are left to support the roof overburden. Calculating the size, shape, and position of pillars is a complicated procedure, and is an area of active research. The technique is usually used for relatively flat-lying deposits, such as those that follow a particular stratum. Room and pillar mining can be advantageous because it reduces the risk of surface subsidence compared to other underground mining techniques. It is also advantageous because it can be mechanized, and is relatively simple. However, because significant portions of ore may have to be left behind, recovery and profits can be low. Room and pillar mining was one of the earliest methods used, although with significantly more man-power. The room ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Beers
De Beers Group is an international corporation that specializes in diamond mining, diamond exploitation, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial and coastal mining. It operates in 35 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Canada and Australia. From its inception in 1888 until the start of the 21st century, De Beers controlled 80% to 85% of rough diamond distribution and was considered a monopoly. Competition has since dismantled the complete monopoly; the De Beers Group now sells approximately 29.5% of the world's rough diamond production by value through its global sightholder and auction sales businesses. The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank. In 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German immigrant to Britain and later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
